


Dressed In Organdy

by acommontater



Series: Where Ever I May Find Her 'verse [2]
Category: Glee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 04:17:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4248990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acommontater/pseuds/acommontater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes she lets herself remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dressed In Organdy

**Author's Note:**

> This is a side-story about the oc photographer in the Soulmates 'verse, just about nothing is involved with canon, just a character I couldn't get out of my head.  
> This is the dress talked about: http://s156021008.onlinehome.us/catalog/images/jen7.jpg

Sometimes she lets herself remember.

Not often- just every once in a while, like checking on a nasty wound before letting it get back to healing.

She would stand out on her small porch when the weather was right, smoking the cigarettes she kept around just for the days like these. The thick scent of vanilla and tobacco twined through the air like lazy snakes as she sat and thought. Closing her eyes, she would tip her head back and let the memories roll over her.  
________________________________________________________________________________

The hot sweet-spicy scent of the land rose up and filled the air as the sun beat down. It’s the kind of dry heat that stretches skin to tight and hair to heavy and prompts the inhabitants of the land to lie as still as possible and hope that the heat will pass. At night it fades to the sticky-sweet smell of settling dust and makes the very moonlight seem like a moist burden on the skin exposed from kicked-away blankets and hot pillows. The summer drags hot like boiled fruit syrup- thick and sweet and just this side of too much on your tongue.

The bitter bite of citrusy nail polish remover cuts through the heat as he returns home. His younger sister giggle and squabble in their room as they paint their nails with careful concentration. When he was younger, he’d been allowed to use the polishes too- it had been cute and endearing, but then he’d gotten older and it was no longer allowed.

Sometimes he would sneak into Mama’s closet and wrap the long loose fabric of her dresses around his thin body to make it curve in the places where he desperately wanted it to. When no one else was home, he would use small bits of Mama’s fancy makeup and strut around the room like the beautiful women he sometimes saw in the shiny-papered magazines.

When he is old enough for the Name to start to show on his wrist, he checks everyday to see if it is there. He checks everyday for a year. The other children at school starts whispers behind his back that he is cursed, an Unnamed.

He takes to wearing a wide cuff of soft leather to cover up the space where his Name should be. After a few months he stops checking. He does not stop wanting to wear dresses or makeup. The young women of his town hold no interest for him.

There are days where he lies in bed and wishes he could tear his skin off, like the small lizards that he so often finds in the house, and have a fresh start, a new skin to shape as his own.

_____________________________________________

He is old enough to leave his small town now. Old enough that he knows that 'he’ does not exist at all. Old enough to know that hate can linger on even in those who love you most. Old enough to hardly notice the leather cuff hiding her blank wrist.

She shifts the worn pack on her shoulders. It holds all of her worldly possessions- a picture of her family, a bottle of perfume, two of her favorite books, some money, some clothes. She goes north, battling her way towards a land where she can change her name and erase all traces of Emilio.

_____________________________________________

She finds herself in the land of St. Francis, no longer Emilio, but Emily.

Emily grows her hair long and curly, paints her nails bright colors, and wears pretty dresses. She perfects her English, but never fully manages to cut the sharp syllables into the edges they should be. She learns about ideas and people and love until it feels as though her heart and minds would overflow with it all. (Sometime it did, tears streaking her cheeks.) She learns how to capture beauty in a camera lens, change her body so that it matches her mind, and how to make others see the joy in the world that she does.

The leather cuff breaks, eventually, leaving a pale strip of wrist exposed.

She doesn’t notice.

______________________________________________

Paul Ipo Gallagher is the name on her wrist.

______________________________________________

She becomes well-known in her city for her pictures. For the emotion and beauty she brings into each frame.

Her friends take her out to celebrate one successful night after a show. (Cooper is loud and insistant- says that the food is great and that they’ll all be able to say that 'they knew her when’.)

Their waiter is small-framed, with gently crinkled hair, and light, expressive eyes hidden behind wide lenses. His gentle smile contrasts brightly with his dark tan skin.

Emily thinks she would be happy to take pictures of nothing but this man for the rest of her life if she could.

His name is Paul.

_______________________________________________

Years later she will be taking pictures and will find a young teenager trying on heels in the costumes, trying to balance elegantly like the beautiful women in the glossy-paged magazines.

She will never know that she is the one to grant the young person the courage to meet their soulmate.


End file.
